Right now I'm having a battle with ants.

They have managed to climb the exterior of my 8-story building, and are presently streaming into my kitchen. Why? Because at some point, one adventurous ant found a rogue pasta noodle under the stove, and told all his friends.

All 10 million of them.

Meanwhile, I am working in another room, hard at work in a different way, studying technology platforms. Today I'm looking at a new reverse proxy solution for websites, for some clients of my tech company Sygnal,

I'm excited about it, busy digging through the API documentation and feature set, and then suddenly I saw my brain do an interesting thing.

I saw it think...

“It's new, I don't trust it yet.”

“Fair enough,” a different part of my brain replied.

In the tech world, I've seen cool, exciting products with awesome capabilities appear on the scene before... and then suddenly disappear without a trace. No announcement regarding what happened, why they failed...

Or even information on what's happening to their users.

And every time, I think,

"Shit. What if I’d built my site on their tech?"

Trust is Contagious

In the area of “technology infrastructure,” my brain distrusts new things. Until they are time tested and market-proven, they don’t get a lot of love from me.

Most importantly, I need to see other people using that product successfully- preferably people who I know personally and trust well.

Without that, it’s that feeling of being the very first person to cross a brand new bridge.

Sure, you'll probably be OK. Probably.

My brain registers a positive signal when others try something new and return better-for-the-experience. Another part of my brain is absorbing that signal into my personal risk-assessment of the situation.

Clearly, part of our survival mechanism is...

Well, it didn't kill Bob.

But in other areas, where risk is reduced, I’m the first in line. The Internet. The web. Digital music. Artificial Intelligence. To most people, I’d be considered an extreme early-adopter of these technologies.

I just wouldn’t depend on them, as the infrastructure for a mission critical system- or invest in them in any way that could result in mayhem & destruction.

My entire career as an executive consultant has demanded that I toe that line.

My clients demand that I be conservative about risk, but make certain that important new opportunities are captured and embraced.

If you’re too early to market, or bet on the wrong tech foundation, your venture is a sailboat without wind and you will die of starvation. This was the path of the Apple Newton, Betamax, Mini-discs, and Google Glass.

But if you’re not fast enough on a good opportunity, you lose the first-mover advantage and that can be just as catastrophic.

Just ask Microsoft when Google beat them to the Internet, and then dominated the desktop for the next 20 years.

Just ask Google after Microsoft beat them to AI. We’ve yet to see what would happen there... but it's clear that MS was ready for The Next Big Change. They weren't about to let that happen again.

It’s fun to watch.

Which Path to Choose?

Humans and ants seem to share a similar balance.

Most humans feel a strong drive towards social conformity, while a small portion have an intense appetite for opportunity and risk.

Those risk-takers are the Ronin. The Outliers. The ants that follow no path.

Sometimes those outliers blow up rocket ships in the pursuit of a manned mission to Mars. Sometimes they find a noodle that can feed a colony.

At a societal level, both mindsets are essential. Dial those tendencies too far in one direction, and we're all sheeple with no shepherd. Dial them too far in the opposite direction, and we have anarchy and chaos.

But what about at the individual level?

Is there a a formula where you can decide when to follow the crowd, and when to go-it-alone?

It seems clear there’s no universal answer here.

Some of those outlier ants might find a noodle, but a lot of them don't return home. Especially if I find them sniffing around my computer desk.

Thpt. That one won't be making it back.

Instinct and luck must play a huge part in an outlier's success... and survival.

But following the herd isn't always safe either.

The Wisdom of the Crowd

In 1906, a Victorian-era statistician and polymath named Sir Francis Galton observed a contest where 787 participants tried to guess the weight of an ox. The answers varied wildly, but after the contest, Galton analyzed the guesses of the participants and found that the median guess was extremely close to the actual weight of the ox.

This led him to the idea that the collective wisdom of a diverse group can produce accurate results, even if individual guesses vary widely.

This phenomena has been studied and repeated many times and it is popularly known as the Wisdom of the Crowd.

But let's change the ox game just a bit.

Let's change it so that the participant's guesses are known to each other, and the participants can influence each other.

A different thing happens...

How Herding is Different

If the participants are influenced by each other's guesses, it can lead to herd behavior, where everyone converges on an incorrect answer.

This is known as herding.

This important distinction makes me think about a lot of things.

It makes me reflect on the impact of social media on voting behavior. About how financial markets work. About fashion and consumer trends.

It makes me think about fake news, and false beliefs. About religion, and cults. About riots and the tragedy of mass panic in a crowded theatres.

It makes me think about psychological phenomena like false safety in numbers, peer pressure and information cascades.

"Everyone else is doing it" might result in a sense of short-term “safety” and the reward of social acceptance, but at what cost?

Smoking.

Nuclear proliferation.

Dick pics.

Would we be doing these things if others were not doing them first?

Except dick pics obviously. We'd all be doing that.

Ant Invasion. A success story?

Zoom out, and we're the ants.

On the whole, most of us feel much more comfortable going the same way everyone else has gone, and eating the same things everyone else is eating.

And then there are the outliers, roaming the curtains, the ceiling, exploring the top of the refrigerator. The curious ones who break the rules, and forge out on their own.

They might not make it back. Or they might strike gold.

Their life is probably not safer. But I wonder if their life is better, and more interesting. It's always the outliers that find the good stuff, and make the new discoveries.

And as much as I value that, I notice my actual real-life decisions are often a bit herd-oriented. It's wired deep.

And it's clearly the safe choice.

Or is it?

Right now, that ant superhighway is going directly to a tasty little pile of "nest killer", and they're all happily gobbling it up and carrying it home.

The crowd can be wise, but this does not mean that being a sheeple is safe.

Goodbye, ants.

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"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." – Jiddu Krishnamurti

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." – Mark Twain

"The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity." – Rollo May

"If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking." – George S. Patton